Yahya Khan

Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan (February 4 1917 – August 10 1980) was the President of Pakistan from 1969 to 1971, following the resignation of Ayub Khan.

President

Ayub Khan was President of Pakistan for most of the 1960s, but by the end of the decade, popular resentment had boiled over against him. Pakistan had fallen into a state of disarray, and he handed over power to Yahya Khan, who immediately instituted martial law. Once Ayub handed over power to Yahya Khan on 25 March 1969 Yahya inherited a two-decade constitutional problem of inter-provincial ethnic rivalry between the Punjabi-Pathan-Mohajir dominated West Pakistan province and the ethnically Bengali Muslim East Pakistan province. In addition Yahya also inherited an 11 year old problem of transforming an essentially one man ruled country to a democratic country, which was the ideological basis of the anti-Ayub movement of 1968-69. Herein lies the key to Yahya?s dilemma. As an Army Chief Yahya had all the capabilities, qualifications and potential. But Yahya inherited an extremely complex problem and was forced to perform the multiple roles of caretaker head of the country, drafter of a provisional constitution, resolving the One Unit question, satisfying the frustrations and the sense of exploitation and discrimination successively created in the East Wing by a series of government policies since 1948. All these were complex problems and the seeds of Pakistan Army?s defeat and humiliation in December 1971 lay in the fact that Yahya Khan blundered unwittingly into the thankless task of cleaning dirt in Pakistan?s political and administrative system which had been accumulating for 20 years and had its actual origins in the pre-1947 British policies towards the Bengali Muslims.

Related Topics:
Ayub Khan - President of Pakistan - Martial law - Punjabi - Pathan - Mohajir - West Pakistan - Bengali - East Pakistan

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The American author Ziring observed that, "Yahya Khan has been widely portrayed as a ruthless uncompromising insensitive and grossly inept leader?While Yahya cannot escape responsibility for these tragic events, it is also on record that he did not act alone?All the major actors of the period were creatures of a historic legacy and a psycho-political milieu which did not lend itself to accommodation and compromise, to bargaining and a reasonable settlement. Nurtured on conspiracy theories, they were all conditioned to act in a manner that neglected agreeable solutions and promoted violent judgements?.

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Yahya Khan, sincerely attempted to solve Pakistan?s constitutional and inter-provincial/regional rivalry problems once he took over power from Ayub Khan in March 1969. The tragedy of the whole affair was the fact that all actions that Yahya took, although correct in principle, were too late in timing, and served only to further intensify the political polarisation between the East and West wings.

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• He dissolved the one unit restoring the pre-1955 provinces of West Pakistan
• Promised free direct, one man one vote, fair elections on adult franchise, a basic human right which had been denied to the Pakistani people since the pre-independence 1946 elections by political inefficiency, double play and intrigue, by civilian governments, from 1947 to 1958 and by Ayub?s one man rule from 1958 to 1969.

However dissolution of one unit did not lead to the positive results that it might have lead to in case "One Unit" was dissolved earlier. Yahya also made an attempt to accommodate the East Pakistanis by abolishing the principle of parity, thereby hoping that greater share in the assembly would redress their wounded ethnic regional pride and ensure the integrity of Pakistan. Instead of satisfying the Bengalis it intensified their separatism, since they felt that the west wing had politically suppressed them since 1958. Thus the rise of anti West Wing sentiment in the East Wing.

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Yahya announced in his broadcast to the nation on 28 July 1969, his firm intention to redress Bengali grievances, the first major step in this direction being, the doubling of Bengali quota in the defence services. It may be noted that at this time there were just Seven infantry battalions of the East Pakistanis. Yahya?s announcement, although made with the noblest and most generous intentions in mind, was late by about twenty years. Yahya?s intention to raise more pure Bengali battalions was opposed by Major General Khadim Hussain Raja, the General Officer Commanding 14 Division in East Pakistan suggesting that the Bengalis were "too meek".

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Within a year he had set up a framework for elections that were held in December of 1970.The results of the elections saw Pakistan split into its Eastern and Western halves. In East Pakistan, the Awami League (led by Mujibur Rahman) held almost all of the seats, but none in West Pakistan. In West Pakistan, the Pakistan Peoples Party (led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) won the lion's share of the seats, but none in East Pakistan. This led to a situation where one of the leaders of the two parties would have to give up power and allow the other to be Prime Minister of Pakistan. The situation also increased agitation, especially in East Pakistan.

Related Topics:
1970 - East Pakistan - Awami League - Mujibur Rahman - West Pakistan - Pakistan Peoples Party - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto - Prime Minister of Pakistan

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Yahya Khan was unable to reach a compromise, and instead cracked down on the political agitation in East Pakistan. This led to a civil war within Pakistan, and eventually drew India into what would extend into the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The end result was the establishment of Bangladesh as an independent republic, and this was to lead Khan to step down. After Pakistan was defeated in 1971, most of the blame was heaped on Yahya and his drinking, disregarding the fact that Yahya was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Related Topics:
Civil war - India - Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 - Bangladesh

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Sultan Khan who served as Pakistan?s Foreign Secretary with Yahya during the fateful year of 1971 noted at many places in his memoirs that most Pakistani generals thought that the Pakistani soldier was more martial and would somehow emerge successfully through the East Pakistan War. Gul Hasan, Sultan thus noted, was one of them and firmly believed in the power of bayonet to solve all problems.The tragedy is that after the war all the blame was heaped on Yahya and the fact that the whole elite plus all those who mattered who were under influence of highly irrational ideas, was deliberately suppressed. To this day in presentations and studies carried out in Pakistan Army schools and colleges of instruction, Yahya is made the scapegoat for the entire 1971 fiasco.

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